7 min Laser sailing video

thieuster

Active Member
I just remembered that this one is on YT. Too nice not to share, I suppose.

Traditionally, Dutch youth sailors start the season in Bandol in the south of France, 20 miles east of Marseille. A 1400 miles round trip for a week in the early spring-sun of the Côte d'Azur. Not this year! Storm, snow and low temps. (And the first time in years, we were unable to attend this year's 'Bandol' - so we didn't get any of this :p).

What's left is a >7 min video of Laser sailing. Enjoy!

 
Awesome video!!! Just what I needed to ramp up the excitement for this weekend - it's Laser Nationals in South Africa this weekend, so we're all busy prepping for that.

I just re-sprayed my daggerboard and rudder, put new telltales on my sail (the previous owner of the sail did an average job) and got a locally-made carbon fiber tiller. Just found that my universal joint is cracking so best replace that. I hope I will be as ready as my boat is haha.

Again, awesome video. Some brilliant footage there and it really captures the whole regatta vibe.
 
Nice!

To get you even more stoked: here's another one from the same guy. The video was shot last week. Mid-september there was a Regatta on the west side of Lake IJsselmeer and last weekend there was one on the NE side of the Lake. Two teams decided to cross the Lake with their boats: down-wind training. First, 10-12 miles North (reaching) and then 14 miles or so downwind to the NNE, to the medieval town of Workum in Friesland.

 
Thanks for sharing this, it was really fun to watch. Sailing in those waves must be a a very cool experience. I just bought a new Sunfish but after sailing with the Lasers the other weekend I got to wonder if I should have gone with one! Love this Sunfish though...
 
As far as I know, nothing went wrong during the trip. I spoke with a few parents of those sailors last Sunday and heard about their trip. I suppose, they would have told me if parts were broken. (When the sailors are on the water, we're always complaining/making cynical jokes about the costs... :rolleyes:)

Not shown on the video is the fact that there were two yachts nearby. One sailed close to the fleet all the time and the other (motor vessel) had positioned itself somewhere along the route for lunch and as a 'floating restroom'. They were in contact all the time by cell phone so they had to be near a cell phone mast on the shore. Look at the map at the beginning of the video: that's also a reason they kept on sailing along the coast to the north and later to the NNE along the Causeway!
 
Ah man!!! SO MUCH FUN. Had a good laugh at some of the capsizes - that moment when you dump your main out past 90 degrees and the boat starts rolling... I can feel that motion in my gut just thinking about it haha.

I speaking of breakages, I haven't broken anything on a Laser besides masts - and on both occasions the breaks were user error.

Break 1 - top section. Mast had a pre-bend so I rotated it instead of doing an end-to-end rebuild... and as you can imagine with the rivet facing forward it snapped pretty much immediately.

Break 2 - bottom section. Same thing. The previous owner of that section also rotated it and it snapped during the first sail in medium winds.

The good old days of my youth...

Since then I have been super finicky with my masts, always cleaning them and ensuring that they are corrosion-free, rinsing them with fresh water after every sail and giving the stainless steel/aluminum junctions a coat of WD40 oil to try prevent corrosion for as long as possible.

Recently got one of these carbon top sections so I am hoping that lasts as long as my hull...
 
You know what one of my favorite parts of that video was? The kids trying to surf the shore break in their Optis. Check it out... at 20 seconds into the video.

That totally brought me back to the kind of stuff we would do when I was 6-7 years old where I learned to sail in Massachusetts. No Optis back then. We had little wooden sailing dinghys of similar size called, "Rookies".

Nice to see such enthusiasm and involvement from sailing clubs these days.

- Andy
 
Me too Andy, I watched it again this morning and noticed them surfing the waves....looks very fun!
 
I attached a part of the map. With 'Medemblik' in the left lower corner and 'Makkum' (a town 5kms north of Workum) in the upper right corner. To give you an idea. The levee in the north that separates the sea from the lake is 32kms long. You do the math!
 

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It's a cleaning product, it has paint thinner in it (solvent) and has very little lubricant. It's good to de-grip rusted screws but it'll generate more rust than before.

It's not meant to protect the surface, actually, it's the other way around.

For galvanic corrosion (two different metals in contact) use tefgel or similar, for metal protection I use an amazing french product called Mecacyl, but I'm pretty sure there are others just as good...
 
It keeps puzzling me. I dropped the whole rust/no rust question on a few classic car related forums (I own, have restored and drive a few classic cars) and the response was not really 'uniform' so to speak.

One c/car owner suggested to drop the question in the mailbox of these boys...Project 52 YT Channel

So I did. A few moments ago. Just sit back and wait...
 
Update:

Got an answer within 60 mins after posting my question:

Hi Menno,

Thank you very much for this information. This is very interesting and does indeed give me something to work with.

Thanks again and best regards,
Todd
 

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